Was this premonition? In retrospect, she thought it must have been, though when she had veered away from the Central Square T-stop and headed down to the riverside footpath, it was the spring weather, pure and simple, that had lured her. She wanted to be out in the night air, not buried in an underground tunnel. She remembered thinking exactly those words: not buried in an underground tunnel. Besides, the constant rush of traffic on Memorial Drive meant the riverwalk was totally safe, safer than the subway at night.
At the deli in Harvard Square, she had bought smoked salmon and Greek salad and a bottle of wine. She had walked home, thinking languidly of a late supper and of passing Kalamata olives from her own mouth to Mishka’s, of licking red wine from his lips. “There’s been another incident,” she would tell him, and he would say, “I know,” and they would make boisterous love because they were alive and unharmed.
But then he would toss in his sleep. He would cry out. He would disappear again, and where would he be, and how long would she have to wait before he turned up, and what explanation would he give?
Perhaps he would already have gone missing.
She felt a sudden precipitous chill in the air.
A few blocks from her apartment, just as she was shifting the grocery bags to ease the drag on one arm, a black car had pulled up at the curb and a man in the passenger seat had got out and pushed something small and hard against her back. Get in , he had ordered. None of this had seemed real. She had spent the night talking to Cobb Slaughter, which seemed even less so. She learned that Mishka might or might not be her lover’s name. She learned that the mosque on Prospect Street in Central Square was said to have terrorist links, perhaps the night’s least surprising piece of news.
She remembered a headline from many months back in the Boston Globe : MOSQUE’S TREASURER APPLAUDS ANTI-ISRAELI VIOLENCE. MOSQUE’S LEADER ENDORSES STATEMENT BY YUSUF ABDULLAH AL-QARADANI: “WE WILL CONQUER EUROPE. WE WILL CONQUER AMERICA. WE WILL CONQUER THE WORLD. ”
She remembered drawing the article to Mishka’s attention. Mishka had shrugged. “One rotten apple doesn’t wreck the whole crop. It’s like judging all Jews by Meir Kahane, or all Christians by the Ku Klux Klan.”
This was long before she had any inkling that one night she would follow him to that mosque.
In her back-into-focus apartment, Leela looked at her watch. It was one o’clock in the afternoon. The apartment was empty. On the fridge door, behind the Mozart magnet, were two notes. The first one said:
Berg called. He wants you to call him back. You missed your session at 10 a.m. and he was pretty worked up. He said, and I quote: “I trust she remembers the grant proposal is due next week, butrevisions are necessary first.” I told him you were sick. Too sick to let him know you were sick. I thought that was the best excuse. Mishka.
The second note said:
I’ll be working late again in the Music Lab. Don’t wait up. Mishka.
Leela removed this note and set it beside the coffee machine while she measured water and ground espresso. Late again at the Music Lab , which was where he had claimed to be the night she had followed him to the mosque. She made coffee and sat staring out the window at the horse-chestnut tree. She had a word for this stage of new leaf: the parsley stage. Frilled ruffs of green, baby green, celery green, sprouted from every knuckle on every branch, the spacing always perfect. Like the stops on a flute, mathematically ideal, as Berg—who had called—might say.
Berg called? Berg never called her at home. He left notes, scrawled in thick black pencil, on pale yellow sheets.
Need to discuss passage on harmonics. This section flawed. 10 a.m. Thursday. Berg.
She would find these peremptory messages in her departmental box. She gulped at her coffee. She pulled the telephone toward her and dialed his office. She imagined
At the deli in Harvard Square, she had bought smoked salmon and Greek salad and a bottle of wine. She had walked home, thinking languidly of a late supper and of passing Kalamata olives from her own mouth to Mishka’s, of licking red wine from his lips. “There’s been another incident,” she would tell him, and he would say, “I know,” and they would make boisterous love because they were alive and unharmed.
But then he would toss in his sleep. He would cry out. He would disappear again, and where would he be, and how long would she have to wait before he turned up, and what explanation would he give?
Perhaps he would already have gone missing.
She felt a sudden precipitous chill in the air.
A few blocks from her apartment, just as she was shifting the grocery bags to ease the drag on one arm, a black car had pulled up at the curb and a man in the passenger seat had got out and pushed something small and hard against her back. Get in , he had ordered. None of this had seemed real. She had spent the night talking to Cobb Slaughter, which seemed even less so. She learned that Mishka might or might not be her lover’s name. She learned that the mosque on Prospect Street in Central Square was said to have terrorist links, perhaps the night’s least surprising piece of news.
She remembered a headline from many months back in the Boston Globe : MOSQUE’S TREASURER APPLAUDS ANTI-ISRAELI VIOLENCE. MOSQUE’S LEADER ENDORSES STATEMENT BY YUSUF ABDULLAH AL-QARADANI: “WE WILL CONQUER EUROPE. WE WILL CONQUER AMERICA. WE WILL CONQUER THE WORLD. ”
She remembered drawing the article to Mishka’s attention. Mishka had shrugged. “One rotten apple doesn’t wreck the whole crop. It’s like judging all Jews by Meir Kahane, or all Christians by the Ku Klux Klan.”
This was long before she had any inkling that one night she would follow him to that mosque.
In her back-into-focus apartment, Leela looked at her watch. It was one o’clock in the afternoon. The apartment was empty. On the fridge door, behind the Mozart magnet, were two notes. The first one said:
Berg called. He wants you to call him back. You missed your session at 10 a.m. and he was pretty worked up. He said, and I quote: “I trust she remembers the grant proposal is due next week, butrevisions are necessary first.” I told him you were sick. Too sick to let him know you were sick. I thought that was the best excuse. Mishka.
The second note said:
I’ll be working late again in the Music Lab. Don’t wait up. Mishka.
Leela removed this note and set it beside the coffee machine while she measured water and ground espresso. Late again at the Music Lab , which was where he had claimed to be the night she had followed him to the mosque. She made coffee and sat staring out the window at the horse-chestnut tree. She had a word for this stage of new leaf: the parsley stage. Frilled ruffs of green, baby green, celery green, sprouted from every knuckle on every branch, the spacing always perfect. Like the stops on a flute, mathematically ideal, as Berg—who had called—might say.
Berg called? Berg never called her at home. He left notes, scrawled in thick black pencil, on pale yellow sheets.
Need to discuss passage on harmonics. This section flawed. 10 a.m. Thursday. Berg.
She would find these peremptory messages in her departmental box. She gulped at her coffee. She pulled the telephone toward her and dialed his office. She imagined
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